Read Ebook: The Hampstead mystery: a novel. Volume 1 (of 3) by Marryat Florence

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Ebook has 616 lines and 37118 words, and 13 pages

des prevented my accepting Lady Makewell's invitation to the Castle, on account of some absurd rumours he had heard of her former life. But, if Mr Hindes thinks he is to be the judge of all my actions and the ruler of my destinies, he is very much mistaken, and so I will let him know before he is many days older. I won't have any man interfering with me in this way, and turning my own parents against me.'

'Don't be a fool!' exclaimed Mr Crampton, roughly. 'Hindes is the best friend you have--that any of us have--and it would be a bad day for the firm and the family, that saw our interests divided. I mentioned him as an authority for the sort of life Mr Frederick Walcheren lives, but, far from setting me against you, he has stood up for your good sense and filial obedience all through the discussion of this unfortunate affair. It is I alone--your father--who has come to the conclusion to cut Mr Walcheren's acquaintance, and now I demand your obedience to my commands. Once and for all, your implicit obedience. Do you promise it me?'

'I have no alternative!' said Jenny.

'All the same, I must have your promise given here, before your mother and your aunt.'

'Very well, then, I promise!' replied the girl after a pause.

'That is all I require,' said the old man; 'and now, I suppose, I can go about my business. But remember! if I ever catch you trying to outwit me by any d--d subterfuges, I will take you away from Hampstead, and you shall never see it again whilst that man is in it.'

He turned then, as if to leave the room, but, perceiving that both his wife and her sister were in tears, he thought he might have spoken too harshly to this child whom he so dearly loved, and came back again for a moment.

'Kiss me, Jenny,' he said; 'I'm not angry with you, my girl, though I may have seemed so, but it's your happiness I have at heart and not my own. There! there!' with a sounding kiss on her cheek, 'you won't fret about the matter, will you? and we'll ride over together to Winchers' to-morrow and secure the little mare you've set your heart on. God bless you, my dear!' and, with another kiss, he left them to themselves.

Jenny stood for a minute silent and motionless, then walked quickly towards the door, as if to return to her own room.

'Jenny, my darling,' pleaded her mother, 'you see the force of your dear father's argument, don't you?'

She went towards the girl as she spoke, and would have wound her arms about her, but Jenny pushed her impatiently aside.

'Don't bother me, mamma,' she said, 'you know how I hate a fuss. All this worry is mostly your fault, you might have prevented it if you had chosen.'

'Oh! Jenny, my dear, how?'

'Why, do you suppose I don't know it has come of some repetition of yours or Aunt Clem's? How should papa, who is all day in the city, and never goes with us anywhere in the evenings, have heard that I danced more with Fred Walcheren than any other man, unless you had told him? And I think it is beastly mean of you, too! Why can't I have my pleasure the same as other girls? I conclude you and papa made love enough to each other when you were young, and yet you grudge me a choice in the matter. I'm only to dance, and talk, and be agreeable with such people as you select for me. It's bitterly unfair.'

'Oh, no, darling, don't say that! Your dear father is only desirous of one thing, to promote your welfare. And Mr Walcheren is very wild, Jenny. He would not make you a good husband. Everybody says so.'

'And so my happiness is to be sacrificed because "everybody" chooses to tell lies of the man I like, and papa and you choose to believe them. Well! I sha'n't forget it in a hurry, I can tell you, mamma. And now, please let me go to my room in peace. I suppose I may claim a right to so much indulgence of my own wishes.'

'My dear girl, when have any of your wishes been ungratified, unless they were likely to prove hurtful to yourself. We should take a knife away from a baby, my darling, however much it cried for it, for fear it should cut itself.'

'Thank you for comparing me to a baby, mamma, but I think you will find I am not quite such a child as you imagine. Anyway, I am woman enough to wish to be left alone to think over this matter by myself.'

And, without waiting for an answer, Jenny ran up the staircase, and locked herself into her bedroom.

The two ladies downstairs were left in a very uncomfortable condition.

'I hope,' remarked Mrs Crampton to her sister, 'I hope dear papa did not go too far in what he said. Jenny is so high-spirited and quick-tempered, that she might be tempted to do something wilful just because she was crossed. And if she dances with Mr Walcheren at the Bouchers' to-night, I don't know what her papa will say.'

'Oh, she would never dare to do so, surely,' replied Aunt Clem; 'she would never fly in John's face in that manner! She is a little fond of her own way sometimes, I admit, but she has a good heart, poor darling, and says far more than she means. And John is right, Emma. Mr Walcheren is a very wild young man, and it would never do for our Jenny to marry him.'

'Of course, John is right,' acquiesced the wife; 'but I wish Jenny could see it in the same light. However, I will take care not to let her out of my sight this evening, and then it will be impossible for Mr Walcheren to get speech of her, without my overhearing what he may say.'

Meanwhile, Jenny, having reached the sanctuary of her own room, drank off her chocolate hastily, and dismissed her maid who was in attendance.

'Is my bath ready, Ellen?' she inquired; 'that is right. Well! you can go now and I will ring when I am ready to dress. Tell Brunell that I will have the Ralli cart at one.'

'Before luncheon, miss?' said the maid.

'At one o'clock, sharp! And don't go out of the way; I shall want you in ten minutes.'

She turned the key of her door on the inside as the maid disappeared, and, sitting down before her writing-table, drew out pen and paper, and commenced to write a letter, which ran as follows:--

'DARLING,--There has been a row here this morning, and papa has forbidden me ever to speak to you again. What are we to do? I shall be at the Bouchers' to-night, without fail. I must not dance with you, but, if you will be in the picture gallery after the fourth dance, I will contrive to speak to you. Oh, Fred, where is all this going to end? They shall never make me give you up, if you remain of the same mind, but open communication with you seems almost impossible. I can't write any more, my head and my heart are both in a whirl. Ever your loving

JENNY.'

She sealed this letter, and directed it to Frederick Walcheren, Esq., 308 Nevern Mansions, Earl's Court, London, and placed it on one side. Her next concern was to see in what condition this unpleasant excitement had left her. But she found no reason to complain.

When she came downstairs again, an hour later, dressed in a tailor-made suit of light fawn tweed, with her jaunty little felt hat on her head, and her hands in white doeskin driving-gloves, holding a handsome ivory-handled whip, few people would have guessed the state of excitement she was still in, she looked so fresh and lovely and smiling. In the hall she encountered her mother, who had heard the wheels of the Ralli cart draw up to the door.

'Out so early, my darling?' Mrs Crampton said, kindly; 'where are you going to?'

'For a drive,' answered the girl curtly.

'But doesn't it look a little like rain,' continued her mother timidly, for she was half afraid of her idol, particularly when the idol was put out.

'I don't care if it does,' replied Jenny, in the same tone; 'I'm not made of sugar.'

'But take an umbrella, darling,' said her mother, anxiously, 'and let Brunell hold it over you, if it should be wet.'

But Miss Crampton rejected all her suggestions with scorn.

'If it thunders and lightens, and I get wet through and go into a consumption, so much the better,' she exclaimed impatiently. 'You and papa between you have contrived to make me so supremely miserable, that I don't care what happens to me! In fact, the sooner I'm dead the better; and I've a good mind to take a dose of prussic acid and end it at once.'

This is a very usual threat of selfish and ill-tempered people, particularly if they have loving and anxious hearts to deal with. To Mrs Crampton, to whom the girl was everything in the world, Jenny's words seem full of bitter portent.

'Oh! my darling! my darling!' she exclaimed, in a voice of the deepest concern, 'don't say such terrible things, even in jest, for Heaven's sake! You will break my heart, Jenny, and your poor father would go mad if he heard you speak in such an awful way. Why! we would cut off our right hands to save you a moment's trouble.'

'Yes! it looks like it, doesn't it?' said the young lady, sarcastically.

'My dearest, don't discuss the subject again. Wait a little and you will see it perhaps in a different light. My head aches so, Jenny, I am not fit to argue it with you, and you have been upset as well. Go for a nice drive, and the fresh air will make your head clearer. But be careful, my love, and don't do anything rash! I'm half afraid of those cobs, Jenny, they're so fresh and spirited.'

'Oh! you're afraid of everything,' replied her daughter in a tone of contempt; 'and as for Aunt Clem, she's alarmed at her own shadow.'

'I was never brought up to horses and dogs, as you have been, dear,' said Miss Bostock, who was standing near.

'No; nor to anything, I should think,' replied her niece, as she prepared to get into her Ralli cart. 'I often think you and mamma must have been born and reared on a desert island, you seem so utterly ignorant of the things most people do.'

With which Miss Crampton gently touched her steeds with the lash of her whip, and they went prancing down the drive as if they intended to bolt, whilst her mother and aunt held their breath with anxiety, lest the wilful driver should come to any harm.

Jenny drove at a smart pace through the principal ways of Hampstead, whilst the pedestrians whom she passed said to each other 'There goes the beautiful Miss Crampton,' and she overheard some of their remarks and flushed with pleasure at the notice she excited. For this young lady's besetting sin was an inordinate vanity of her personal attractions, which she had cultivated to the exclusion of all the Christian graces. She was a specimen of that most odious of all modern innovations, the fast girl of the nineteenth century, and she was vulgar in consequence, for all fast women are vulgar, and obnoxious in the eyes of everybody but their male admirers. For when will men be ever sensible enough to separate the value of personal beauty and mental charm? Not while they have eyes to see. Once touch their senses, and, for the time their infatuation lasts, you cannot convince them but that the mind and soul of their goddess equal her body in charm. Frederick Walcheren was infatuated with the beauty of this girl, and he believed her disposition to be all that was good and lovable as well. It appeared so to him, for, whenever they met, Jenny was in her best temper, and ready to be pleased with everything. Had he even seen her, as she had been on the present occasion, rude and impertinent to her parents, cruelly sarcastic to her meek and unoffending aunt, and obstinately resolved upon having her own way, he would still have taken her part, declared her to be a suffering angel, and her father and mother most unjust and tyrannical towards her. Shakespeare never wrote a greater truism than when he made Rosalind declare that 'Love is a madness,' a madness that blinds our vision, distorts our judgment, and makes all things, not only apparently, but actually, different from what they are; when the rose-coloured spectacles have been torn by circumstance from our eyes, and we wonder we could ever have been such egregious fools as to think that they were otherwise.

Miss Crampton, then, with her heart on fire and her soul up in arms, stopped at the first pillar-box she passed, and bade Brunell post the letter which she gave him, the letter she had written in her bedroom and which she knew would reach town before Mr Walcheren left it to meet her at the house of their mutual friends, the Bouchers.

And as she flew over the highway, one sentence kept revolving itself over and over in her mind, and the burden of it was, 'I will never give him up, I will never give him up.'

His money and his good looks had rendered him an easy prey to the harpies of the other sex, and had landed him into one or two scrapes with more respectable women. His cousin, Philip, had often had to be the go-between and peacemaker with sundry fair damsels, who were violently bent on a breach of promise case, or a horse-whipping through means of their next friend.

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